![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Promotion Test
Jun. 5th, 2004 07:55 pmHopefully tomorrow I'll be able to walk. Argh.
Today was our promotion test at karate. A 30 minute written test, and a good 3 hours or so doing warming up, basics, kata (forms) and kumite (contact freefighting). I'm knackered. Part of the basics stuff included the particular joy of doing 150 mawashi geris... roundhouse kicks, at face height. Now, we've done up to 100 twice or so, but 150 was a novelty. A painful one :P And I can't say my leg was remotely face height when we hit 150. I can't wait for my general physical condition to improve some more.
The 100 push ups were fun too. Full pushups, all the way up, and all the way down. Not that anyone made it to 100 (which is the minimum requirement if you ever want to get your blackbelt) but they wanted you to keep score. I was having enough issues with just getting my body off the floor so I had no idea how many I did, I told him 20, but that was probably very generous. Suffice it to say I have no upperbody arm strength. And the rolling pushups we do as warming-up/basics usually definitely don't target the same muscles. Must start practising at home so I can at least beat the 20 next time.
I'm also glad the weather was quite cool today as well... I think I would have passed out if we'd had the heat and humidity of earlier in the week, or 2 weeks ago (when it hit like 90F). You also don't get any breaks during class or promotion tests, so you can't just run off for some water or anything either.
The white belts got to sit down through part of basic once they started doing the more advanced punch/block/kick combinations. Then we got to join in when we went onto kata (traditional sequences of blocks/attacks). After doing the basic kata, the white belts got to sit at the sidelines, as they started doing more advanced kata. The more advanced, the more of the lower belts got to sit down. You're required to know certain kata for each belt level.
Yellow and green belt kata was interesting. During one of the kata sequences the shihan wandered by each person and hit them with a large stick, about the size of a samurai sword. Because the stick was comprised of several pieces of wood (bamboo I think) it made a hell of a lot of noise on contact. Quite intimidating to see when that's your first promotion test :P Though there's a good reason for it... that kata has specific breathing and stances in it which requires you to tense the appropriate muscles, and he was testing to see how tense the muscles were, and whether the legs/arms/stomach/back were immovable under the blows, rather than you just lightly holding your stance.
Last but not least, freefighting. Supposedly light contact, but I guess "light" doesn't mean the same thing for a lot of people. Though the higher the belts, the more full contact it becomes. As a white belt you only had to spar once against someone of the same belt colour, and usually they pair you off with the same gender also. The higher your belt, the more fights you had to do. The current director of the IKO Kyokushin once did the '100 man kumite' which is 100 fights with a fresh partner, done consecutively. Right now the amount of effort that would take just blows my mind.
I'm sporting a nice new bruise on my right lower arm, about an inch from the one I got on Tuesday from holding a bag when we were practising certain axe kicks. So there's pink/purple and yellow/green/purple blooming. At least the one on my right upper arm is faded to the point of barely being visible... otherwise I'm going to really start looking like a victim of domestic abuse or something.
We should hear whether we passed on Monday or Tuesday, though one of the black belts mentioned to PreZ that white belts nearly always pass. I think I did pretty well, I was horribly nervous before and during, mostly because I hate doing stuff in front of a group of people, and of course this was a dojo full of people, at turns completely focussed on just a few people (especially during sparring), and one of those few could be you. Public exhibition really isn't my thing.
And now you probably know more about kyokushin karate than you ever wanted to ;)
Today was our promotion test at karate. A 30 minute written test, and a good 3 hours or so doing warming up, basics, kata (forms) and kumite (contact freefighting). I'm knackered. Part of the basics stuff included the particular joy of doing 150 mawashi geris... roundhouse kicks, at face height. Now, we've done up to 100 twice or so, but 150 was a novelty. A painful one :P And I can't say my leg was remotely face height when we hit 150. I can't wait for my general physical condition to improve some more.
The 100 push ups were fun too. Full pushups, all the way up, and all the way down. Not that anyone made it to 100 (which is the minimum requirement if you ever want to get your blackbelt) but they wanted you to keep score. I was having enough issues with just getting my body off the floor so I had no idea how many I did, I told him 20, but that was probably very generous. Suffice it to say I have no upperbody arm strength. And the rolling pushups we do as warming-up/basics usually definitely don't target the same muscles. Must start practising at home so I can at least beat the 20 next time.
I'm also glad the weather was quite cool today as well... I think I would have passed out if we'd had the heat and humidity of earlier in the week, or 2 weeks ago (when it hit like 90F). You also don't get any breaks during class or promotion tests, so you can't just run off for some water or anything either.
The white belts got to sit down through part of basic once they started doing the more advanced punch/block/kick combinations. Then we got to join in when we went onto kata (traditional sequences of blocks/attacks). After doing the basic kata, the white belts got to sit at the sidelines, as they started doing more advanced kata. The more advanced, the more of the lower belts got to sit down. You're required to know certain kata for each belt level.
Yellow and green belt kata was interesting. During one of the kata sequences the shihan wandered by each person and hit them with a large stick, about the size of a samurai sword. Because the stick was comprised of several pieces of wood (bamboo I think) it made a hell of a lot of noise on contact. Quite intimidating to see when that's your first promotion test :P Though there's a good reason for it... that kata has specific breathing and stances in it which requires you to tense the appropriate muscles, and he was testing to see how tense the muscles were, and whether the legs/arms/stomach/back were immovable under the blows, rather than you just lightly holding your stance.
Last but not least, freefighting. Supposedly light contact, but I guess "light" doesn't mean the same thing for a lot of people. Though the higher the belts, the more full contact it becomes. As a white belt you only had to spar once against someone of the same belt colour, and usually they pair you off with the same gender also. The higher your belt, the more fights you had to do. The current director of the IKO Kyokushin once did the '100 man kumite' which is 100 fights with a fresh partner, done consecutively. Right now the amount of effort that would take just blows my mind.
I'm sporting a nice new bruise on my right lower arm, about an inch from the one I got on Tuesday from holding a bag when we were practising certain axe kicks. So there's pink/purple and yellow/green/purple blooming. At least the one on my right upper arm is faded to the point of barely being visible... otherwise I'm going to really start looking like a victim of domestic abuse or something.
We should hear whether we passed on Monday or Tuesday, though one of the black belts mentioned to PreZ that white belts nearly always pass. I think I did pretty well, I was horribly nervous before and during, mostly because I hate doing stuff in front of a group of people, and of course this was a dojo full of people, at turns completely focussed on just a few people (especially during sparring), and one of those few could be you. Public exhibition really isn't my thing.
And now you probably know more about kyokushin karate than you ever wanted to ;)
